Fiction | June 01, 1990

We knew nothing of explosives. But sometimes, at the end of lunch hour, we’d wake from our naps and remember that we were sleeping inside a bunker that stored 100,000 pounds of gunpowder. We’d wake–while those fleeting dreams we never recalled evaporated quickly from our heads–and squint at the sunlight that always hurt our eyes as it brightened the open front doorway of the bunker. Then we’d lift ourselves slowly from the tarpaper floor, which was coated with a layer of rubber so there wouldn’t be any sparks.

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